Archives for posts with tag: Legislative

Seriously, what else can explain their actions of the past 35 years, since the Reaganistas took over a formerly rational political party? Consider these few examples of many:

Number A: Teapublicans in Congress are openly sabotaging negotiations between the USA and a hostile foreign power, even though the Constitution says that foreign policy is in the Executive Branch’s portfolio. So Boehner’s invitation to Bibi to “address” the Congress is more than just another of his drunkard’s hissy-fits: it violates the Constitution. Not that he is any stranger to extra-constitutional actions, of course. Look at his actions as they relate to women’s rights, minority rights, voting rights, and so on: Boehner and the rest of his party are actively breaking the law, based on an illegal premise, for an illegal purpose.

Letter 2: Teapubbies are a load of “Christian” evangelicals who want to trash the Establishment Clause and set up a Theocracy. They claim that this is a Christian nation, even though the law pretty clearly says otherwise:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.[1]

Thirdly: Teapubbies are frequently Secessionist scumballs. Such as the seditious “Republic of Texas”, the Southern National Congress, and the League of the South, to name but a very few.

All of these groups and people are Right-Wing Teabaggers, Libertarians and Teapublicans. None of them are Liberals. And all of them obviously hate America and its Constitution. By their actions we know them.

Likewise we know that people who vote for Teapublicans also support sedition, legislative overreach, and religious totalitarianism.

What’s that you say, dear “Republican” voter? You claim that you support the Constitution?

Bull-f***ing-s***. When you vote for a person or party that treats the law of the land like a**wipe, you support that treatment, as surely as if it were your own toilet into which the soiled Constitution got dropped and flushed away.

By our votes people know us. If you are voting for Teapubbies… *flush*

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Little Johnny Boehner has been bitching about President Obama’s supposed “executive overreach”, and how that mean old Prexy has been violating the Constitution’s Separation of Powers doctrine. So what does the Speaker do next? Why, he violates that very doctrine himself via legislative overreach. (“Grimy arse”, said the pot to the kettle.)

Boehner, you see, doesn’t like the way we are negotiating a treaty (an executive branch power) with Iran, so he invited Bibi Neti, the PM of Israel, to f*** up the negotiations address Congress. This without involving the President. That is a legislative power grab of unprecedented proportions.

And Boehner isn’t even trying to pretend. He says, straight out, that he is trying to take over treaty negotiations:

That invitation to address Congress, extended by House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, marked a sharp rejection of Obama’s plea for Congress to stay out of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. If Congress votes to sanction Iran, Obama had warned, it could upset delicate and long-running talks.

Boehner said he would ignore the president’s demand, taking the unusual step of inviting a foreign leader directly into an American political debate.

Obama “expects us to stand idly by and do nothing while he cuts a bad deal with Iran,” Boehner told fellow Republicans at a closed-door meeting Wednesday morning, according remarks provided by a senior GOP aide. “Two words: ‘Hell no!’ . . . We’re going to do no such thing.”

Boehner also told reporters Wednesday morning that he did not speak with Obama before inviting Netanyahu to address Congress.

The Speaker’s pot arse is far grimier than the Prexy’s kettle one. If Boehner were truly concerned about the Constitution, he would not be using an agent of a foreign power to kneecap the President while Obama is negotiating with another, unfriendly, nation.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

It’s a fair question. Did Boehner and McConnell and all the other Kochsuckers work to cut down on Democratic voter turnout at the same time they stuck it to the Prexy all these years? It’s one way to interpret those falling numbers of Millennial voters:

And for a while, it didn’t look like millennials would need much convincing. As more members of this generation reached voting age, participation among young voters rose. The peak year was 2008 (52 percent). In 2012, the turnout among voters 18-29 dropped to 45 percent.

On top of that, the rate of voters under 30 who could say with certainty that they were registered to vote fell steadily after 2008, according to the Pew Research Center. By 2012, it hit 50 percent — the lowest number Pew has recorded going back as far as 1996.

Ashley Spillane, the president of Rock the Vote, says it’s no mystery why millennials, or any voters, would be turned off from the process: “Politics right now is really disheartening. I think it’s why you see in the polls that young people are not affiliating with political parties.”

Think about it for a second: right before the “Republicans” started their “f*** Obama and the voters he rode in on” campaign, youth voting numbers were frickin’ huge, because the kids believed change was possible. But after 6 years of deliberate Teabagger destruction of change, the youth of America are disillusioned and are disengaging. And Millennials tend to vote for Dems.

Coincidence? In these times? Yeah, right. There is no way to prove it, of course, but in the end it doesn’t really matter whether or not the GOP has been manipulating Millennials on purpose or just enjoying a fringe benefit of their racist, treasonous, corrupt plan to seize power.

It doesn’t matter for two reasons:
Number A: it is wrong to suppress votes, whether it is a primary or secondary goal, and
Letter 2: the way to fight back is to defy expectations, by voting.

Millennials, wake up: you have been played. Strike back by voting against every Repub in every race, every ballot, every election. Vote to show them you are smarter than they think you are. Vote, because they don’t want you to.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Here is how the process actually works:
Step One: Congress decides how much money to spend and passes bills so the rest of the government can spend it.
Step Two: since Congress rarely considers whether or not we can afford all of the spending they authorize, there is usually a budget deficit, which increases the national debt.
Step Three: the Congress allows the treasury to borrow more money to cover the spending that Congress ordered. That is called “raising the debt ceiling”.

Pretty simple, and you may have noticed something: the word “President” appeared nowhere in the process. That is because the Executive cannot and does not allocate the vast majority of Federal funding. The Prexy has damn-all to do with the funding levels established by Congress. All he can do is execute the funding (which is why it is called the “Executive Branch”).

So why does Congress ask the Prexy for “concessions” or “reforms”, whenever the debt ceiling need lifting? The answer, Gentle Reader, is this: Congress is too scared to admit that they are responsible for our massive budget and the resulting red ink, so they play “pin the blame on Obama”. If the taxpaying public knew that Congress was to blame, they might vote their legislators out of office.

And the one thing no Senator or Congresscritter can bear is the idea of having to actually work for a living. So they pretend that it is the eeeeevil Obaminator who is responsible for the deficit. And the “News” media plays chorus to the Teapublican lies.

Remember this when you next cast your ballot. Congress owns the budget, the deficit and the debt. It’s time for those lazy, cowardly millionaires on Capitol Hill to nut up and accept responsibility for their actions, and to stop lying to us about who is to blame for the consequences of said actions.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Mr. and Mrs. Blunt and Cranky are in an undisclosed but warm and sunny location, getting a much-needed vitamin D infusion. So here is a short post about the Prexy’s news conference today:

Is this humble blogger the only person on Planet Earth who noticed that almost every question asked of President Obama should have been directed at Congress? The Debt Ceiling, gun control laws, almost everything being asked was a topic that is the responsibility of the Legislative Branch, and about which the Executive can do damn-all.

On the other hand, if the reporters had asked Congress, they wouldn’t have gotten straight answers, so what the hey. Ask the wrong guy, ask the right guys, nothing’ll get done either way. So sure, ask Obama. Why not?

Mr B & C